What is Affiliate Marketing? 

Affiliate Marketing is the term used to describe the business of selling someone else’s product(s) or service(s) online and earning commissions on each sale generated.   

Affiliate Marketing is acknowledged by many to be the simplest and best way for beginners to get started making money online in the shortest possible time frame because:

1)    There are no overheads: you don’t need to carry any stock, undertake any product fulfilment or shipping.

2)    There’s no customer support required: your vendors (the companies whose products you are selling) handle all the customer orders, queries and refunds, etc.

People who promote products in this way are called "affiliates" (hence “affiliate marketing”). The majority of affiliates promote products through their own websites, blogs or email lists. However, anywhere you can insert a website address or hyperlink can effectively be transformed into a promotional medium.

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Affiliate marketing is not a pyramid or mlm scheme or a scam: it’s for ordinary people looking to earn an additional income from their websites. However, it can also be for individuals looking to build a serious home-based business that they can run from pretty well anywhere in the world with exceptional earning potential.

The term "affiliate marketing" encompasses a whole host of different subjects:

• The art of finding good, profitable products and niches to promote  
• How to conduct market research  
• Thinking up imaginative and innovative ways to promote your products  
• Developing social networking and "web 2.0" strategies  
• E-mail marketing  
• How to design and build websites  
• Search Engine Optimization (SEO) or how to get your site appearing in the search engines    
• Pay-per-click (PPC) advertising  
• The art of finding or generating good content for your website, blog or newsletter  
• How to motivate yourself, continue to stay motivated and avoid “banana skins” along the way  
• Earning additional income by displaying ads on your site (e.g. Google AdSense)  

And even this list is not exhaustive!